calendario eventi  :: 

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26/3/2015

Two Exhibitions

Hauser & Wirth, Zurich

Dieter Roth, Björn Roth, Oddur Roth ROTH BAR & STUDIO

As a central part of the exhibition ‘Roth Bar & Studio. Dieter Roth, Björn Roth and Oddur Roth’, Hauser & Wirth Zürich will launch a fully-functional, specially-crafted bar designed by Björn and Oddur Roth, son and grandson of German-born Swiss artist Dieter Roth (1930 – 1998). This site-specific bar will be open in the evening every Thursday to Saturday for the duration of the exhibition, and will host a full programme of events, including an opening performance by Björn and Oddur Roth on 27 March.

First conceived by Dieter Roth in the early 1980s, ‘the bar’ is a dynamic and changing installation, and is a continuing element in the Roths’ cross-generational practice. As a condition for him to exhibit with Hauser & Wirth, Dieter Roth insisted that a bar form part of his first show in 1997. Along with his son Björn, Dieter Roth installed the functional ‘Bar 2’ (1983 – 1997) around the corner from the gallery in Fabrikstrasse in Zurich. Every beer bottle served became a part of the bar installation and visitors’ conversations were recorded and archived. Nearly 20 years after this event, another bar – entitled ‘Economy Bar’ – will now inhabit the gallery, bringing reality and art even closer together.

The bar, comprised of scavenged materials, embodies a central motif found throughout Dieter Roth’s work. ‘Economy Bar’ (2004 – 2013) was first unveiled in the exhibition ‘Dieter Roth: Lest / Train’ at Reykjavik Art Museum in 2005, before continuing on to ‘Dieter Roth, Martin Kippenberger’ at Hauser & Wirth Coppermill and, most recently, the bar was installed as part of ‘Dieter Roth Björn Roth. Islands’ (HangarBicocca, Milan, Italy, 2013). The bar has gradually evolved during this period, as for each exhibition site-specific materials have been incorporated into the installation.

As both bar and studio were central concepts and locales for the work of Dieter Roth, the exhibition will also focus on ‘The Studio of Dieter and Björn Roth’ (1995 – 2008). In this piece, Roth’s St. Johanns Vorstadt studio in Basel becomes a site of intervention – his long-time collaborator and son, Björn, enters the studio where they worked together from 1995, to recreate the energy of his father in his atelier. Through art, objects and atmosphere, the studio becomes an active cosmos again.

Recapturing the spirit of Dieter Roth, the visitor is invited to become part of the artist’s on-going installation. Björn Roth recalls, ‘I don’t think the word ‘art’ was ever used. The studio was inventory, and the works were material. ‘Now we have to root around in the inventory’, he’d say when the time had come to work on something from our studios.’ ‘Economy Bar’ is emblematic of this creative process as it includes items from Dieter Roth’s studio in Iceland, thus also activating the continuous re-use of materials.

‘Economy Bar’ will be presented alongside a series of ten gestural paintings by Björn Roth inspired by an ornithology book, as well as his series of 15 multimedia artworks that consist of overpainted photographs of the Basel studio that he shared with his father. Shown together they work to highlight the artistic legacy of Dieter Roth – as it lives on in the continued evolution of his collaborative pieces, and also in the creative practice of his son and grandson.

Recently, Björn and Oddur Roth have continued the bar building practice, creating ‘Roth New York Bar’ for Hauser & Wirth New York’s inaugural exhibition at its 18th Street space in 2013, as well as ‘Roth Bar & Grill’, constructed for the unveiling of Hauser & Wirth Somerset in 2014.

The assemblage-like bars always include locally-sourced, salvaged materials and often incorporate monitors showing videos, musical instruments and carpentry scraps. ‘Economy Bar’ and its changing shape and configuration represent a continuously evolving practice, bridging the gap between art and life. Along with serving coffee and drinks and hosting DJs, the bar – run by Mr Samigo and Family – will further disrupt the juncture between artwork and reality by delivering a programme that includes live music, film screenings, a panel discussion, as well as a karaoke night and a slam poetry contest. On 27 March, the bar will be serving food and drinks and playing music from 6 pm, Björn and Oddur Roth will perform at 9 pm and a live DJ will play a set from 10 pm.

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André Thomkins Works 1946 – 1985

Hauser & Wirth presents an exhibition of works by Swiss artist André Thomkins (1930 – 1985), whose capacious and supple imagination produced a standalone and category-defying oeuvre, encompassing uncanny drawings, music, sculptures, paintings and wordplay. With a focus on the masterworks Thomkins created during the 1960s and 1970s, this exhibition includes work spanning his entire career, highlighting both a mastery of classical techniques and an avant-garde approach.

Celebrated as a ‘Schwebsel’ (floating soul) by friends and fellow artists for his autonomous artmaking, Thomkins spent much of his life in Germany where he was actively involved with the Fluxus movement. He was life-long friends with the likes of Daniel Spoerri and Dieter Roth, with whom he shared an experimental approach to language and use of everyday materials. Thomkins’s connection to Roth, a central artist in Hauser & Wirth’s history and identity, alludes to his enduring voice in the canon of art history. Thomkins’s practice remains a touchstone for a younger generation of artists, including Peter Fischli & David Weiss.

In his early drawings, Thomkins experimented with delicate multi-directional configurations as a breeding ground for unique, iconographic creations. Closely interspersed vertical lines become enlivened by small figures or surreal details which break the pattern of the regular hatchings. These delicate ink and pencil works reveal Thomkins’s own wonderful world of fantastic forms and figures, populated by puppet-like beings. With limited shaded pencil marks, the earliest work in the show, ‘homunculus’ (1946), evokes ancient deities and Egyptian mummification and strikes an eerie note of post-war self-identification – it is thought to be a self-portrait as Thomkins often portrayed himself with crossed arms.

From afar, the complex multi-coloured grid of ‘Niederland’ (Netherland) (1965) appears uniform, but closer inspection reveals the artist’s mastery of working in miniature with the detail of a falling figure in red striped trousers, a couple embracing, and a floating staircase. In a stylistic series begun in the mid-1960s that he called the Rapportmuster (Repeat Patterns), Thomkins’s inventive practice of treating the pattern as generative field revisits the idea of Leonardo da Vinci described in his ‘Treatise on Painting’ that an artist should be able to find a landscape within a stain upon a wall – an exercise akin to the art of Dada and Surrealism.

Even though the themes of repeating patterns, fantastic architecture and collage existed as distinctive threads of inquiry across Thomkins’s oeuvre, elements of each of these motifs come together in various works, such as ‘Blut-Milch-Zirkulation’ (Blood-Milk-Circulation) (1970), ‘GB’ (1975) as well as ‘wer hat den kürbiskern verschluckt?’(who has swallowed the pumpkin seed?) completed in the year of Thomkins’s death, 1985. This last painting, split into quadrants, mimics the artist’s earlier collage in its layering of coloured blocks and shapes, as well as playing with spatial relationships on various scales.

Thomkins’s play with motif and technique across his career – and the way in which distinct avenues of investigation interlink in single works – demonstrates a virtuosity and a greater vision of his art. Viewed as a whole, the exhibition at Hauser & Wirth highlights the inventiveness of an artist who had a deft hand and an agile mind.

About the Artist

André Thomkins was born in Lucerne, Switzerland in 1930. He worked most of his life in Germany where he died in 1985. During his lifetime he exhibited little, preferring to work independently of institutions and galleries. Major exhibitions of his work occurred only after his untimely death, introducing his practice to a new audience. In 1989 and 1990, his extensive oeuvre was shown in a retrospective exhibition in Berlin and Lucerne. In 1999, coinciding with the publication of the catalogue raisonné of his work by the Swiss Institute for Art Research, the Kunstmuseum Bern brought his work into focus again with the show ‘Traumszene’ (Dream Scene). Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Lackskins’ at Bündner Kunstmuseum, Chur, Switzerland (2012); the touring retrospective ‘André Thomkins. Eternal Network’, Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Liechtenstein , Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Germany and Neue Galerie, Graz, Austria (2013 – 2014), and ‘André Thomkins. Zeichnungen und Lackskins’, Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland, 2013.

Image: Economy Bar, 2004–2013, Mixed media installation, Dimensions variable

Press Contact:
Amelia Redgrift, amelia@hauserwirth.com

Opening: Friday 27 March
Bar, Food & Music From 6 pm
Performance by Björn Roth & Oddur Roth 9 pm
Live DJ Set From 10 pm


Hauser & Wirth
Limmatstrasse 270
8005 Zurich

Gallery hours:
Monday to Friday, 11 am – 6 pm
Saturday, 11 am – 5 pm
Easter closure: Friday 3 – Monday 6 April 2015
Gallery closed: 1, 2, 14 and 25 May 2015

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